Comments

True, but there have been few EC attempts, say, 4000. Whatever the actually numbers are, the per-attempt rate is extraordinarily high in the context of modern safety standards. This holds for recent times as well, e.g. the past 25 years.

is that the number of summiters? or the number that attained 8km+? or the number that reached basecamp?

btw, I agree that Everest is more dangerous, but I'm not clear on how that is relevant.

In the US, the traffic death rate is about 1 per every 100 million vehicle miles [1]. Assuming an average speed of 40 mph [2], that corresponds to odds of 1 in 167000 per 15 hours of driving using this calculation:

100000000/40/15 = 167000

EC attempts are 150 times more risky than driving using this calculation:

14138 climbs is the total climbers and Sherpa's that went up from base camp. http://news.nationalpost.com found at the left bottom of picture.

I see where 14138 comes from (7404 + 626 + 6106 + 2), but I do not see where the graphic indicates that all 14138 left basecamp to begin a summit attempt. The annotation is just "on Everest". But I'm still not clear on how that might be relevant.

Not all swimmers that arrive at EC basecamp (Dover) start their crossing attempt.

Good job you are not talking No Limits Freediving. In recent years, those attempting a world records most of them are now dead or seriously injured in making the attempts or during training for the attempts. Out of 6 people making the last few attempts the attrition rate is 2 dead, 2 seriously injured, 2 still alive.

I'm not a mathematician, so nothing to offer in that way of thinking. I will say, I got very upset yesterday while reading comments on a SwimSwam article about Nick Thomas' death. Many folks were saying that Nick should have been wearing a wetsuit for safety, blaming his boat crew for being negligent, and stating that no one can survive in water temps that cold for that long and that swimming the Channel should be banned. All of which is a bunch of BS. I know most of those idiots are probably non-swimmers and don't know the first thing about channel swimming, but still- GRRRR.

There is risk in living life. Yeh, swimming a channel is dangerous. But, so is riding a bike on the side of a road, rock climbing, base jumping (did you see the article about some dude who accidentally Live Streamed his own death while jumping?), riding in a car, etc. Let's just ban fun and adventures because we might die. Let's just sit on the couch and eat potato chips- inside is so much safer than outside, until you die from a heart attack because you weigh 1000 pounds and don't ever move.

I've said it a million times: If I die while I'm swimming, you can all know I died doing what I love and I was happy. I know others feel that way, too, so just let it be.

I'm all for safety and not being an idiot (ok, sometimes I swim in lightning storms and that's idiotic, but whatever). But, to talk about banning channel swimming or saying you shouldn't take a risk because it's dangerous is being idiotic, too.

@ssthomas I also had read those comments the other day about the EC tragedy and wrote a note to SwimSwam asking PLEASE for someone to EDUCATE their writers on the sport of Open Water Swimming. I have not heard anything back and will not hold my breath. Those comments were insulting at best.

About the same number of people have died in the umpteen years of tracking English Channel swims (8?) as die in the swim portions of triathlons in 1 year in America (5-12). While there is no definitive causation in the triathlons wearing a wet suit for a prolonged period is one thing they are looking at. Triathletes are not about to give up their sport (or wet suits). :-)
There are risks involved in any sport. We lost a talented swimmer in a 2 mile race here a couple years back. I have to believe that the folks in this group are very mindful of the risks to themselves and their crews involved in our sport. Sadly journalists often write about activities they know nothing about or barely understand.

Personally I find the SwimSwam (SwimSpam) site to be filled with comments from the same handful of posters, all with seemingly little to no real understanding of what they're writing about. Some of the comments on the Channel death were very disturbing to say the least yet there seems to be zero moderation of them.

SwimSwam doesn't have anyone on their management team or writing staff with any OWS knowledge/expertise to speak of. Their focus is pool swimming. So, not particularly surprising.

"Gold Medal Mel" was a great butterflier in the day, but knows jack about marathon swimming. Braden Keith and Mike Lewis have always been big Nyad woo-hoo cheerleaders (example).

So again, not surprising their site has little of interest to this community, or that they block negative comments on FINIS/Nyad press releases, or that they lack editorial understanding of a story about tragedy on an English Channel swim.

This thread made me angry all over again earlier this morning so I posted on the "comments" section on SwimSwam- basically asking them to just ASK or google search with questions about Open Water, and suggesting that they should try to educate their audience as to the sport (OWS) as opposed to printing half-facts. I actually thought it was quite eloquent (for me) and even civil BUT the moderator (who let pass all the threads disparaging the swimmer who just died and questioning his judgement) didn't put it on the board.

While I've seen a few articles tangentially mention that Thomas was doing the swim as part of an "Enduroman" event, I haven't seen enough articles actually spell out that this means that Thomas had only a day or two before (on the Enduroman website, the wait times I've seen in Dover have been from around 6-20 hours--I don't know what Thomas's own wait time was, but the competitors would want it to be as short as possible, I think) finished running 87 miles continuously. While some people outside the OWS community might consider simply swimming the channel (w/o a wetsuit! gasp!) a death wish, personally, I would consider swimming the channel after running 87 miles a death wish (OK actually just running 87 miles would probably be a death wish for me).